2023-09-02 05:03:04
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The idea of deploying armed police to every Texas school is meeting with the reality of insufficient resources or officers following a new provision went into effect Friday in a display of how a goal many states are embracing in response to America’s cycle of shooting massacres is proving unfeasible in many communities.
Dozens of the largest school districts in Texas, which serve many of the state’s 5 million students, are reopening classrooms without complying with new state requirements that armed officers be on every campus. The provision is a cornerstone of a safety law signed into law by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who rejected calls for gun control this year despite angry pleas from parents whose children were killed in the Uvalde school massacre.
Texas has nearly 9,000 public schools, the second-most following California, making the provision the largest of its kind in the United States.
“We all support the idea,” said Stephanie Elizalde, superintendent of the Dallas Independent School District, which has more than 140,000 students. “The biggest challenge for all superintendents is that this is once more an arrangement for which there are no resources.”
The difficulties expose the limitations of calls for armed guards to be deployed at all schools, more than a decade following the National Rifle Association championed the idea in the face of intense demands for tougher gun laws. Gun control following the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.
The new Texas law allows for exceptions, but also does not require districts to report compliance, which makes it unclear how many schools are in compliance.
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